How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I did not throw the grenades on that night on the hill under the moon, it threw them, and it did a near-perfect job. (1.7)
It's a little frightening that Rojack doesn't experience anything supernatural until he's forced to kill someone. Regardless, the important question is why? Is it just the stress of war bringing out his animal instinct? Or is it something more?
Quote #2
Suddenly it was all gone, the clean presence of it, the grace, it had deserted me in the instant I hesitated. (1.7)
Rojack loses his supernatural powers as soon as he becomes aware of what he's doing. This certainly gives some credence to the idea (illustrated in Rojack's own philosophical work) that society lost a piece of its magic when it became self-aware.
Quote #3
I was now […] a professor of existential psychology with the […] thesis that magic, dread, and the perception of death were the roots of motivation. (1.11)
Yeah, it's really surprising that Rojack of all people focused his studies on death and magic… not. His thesis certainly holds true to his own experiences: After all, he only felt a touch of the supernatural when his life was in serious danger. Now that he's back in society, he can see traces of that magic wherever he looks.
Quote #4
I knew I would fly. My body would drop like a sack […] but I would rise, the part of me which spoke and thought and had its glimpses of the landscape of my Being. (1.19)
We're pretty sure that the word Rojack is looking for here is soul. At this point in the novel, Rojack's superstitious beliefs seem to be devolving into downright madness—don't forget, he's only thinking about suicide because he thinks the moon is talking to him. Eek.
Quote #5
She had powers, my Deborah, she was psychic to the worst degree, and she had the power to lay a curse. (1.61)
Although we are initially tempted to just laugh at this, it quickly becomes clear that Deborah does have some sort of magical power. This actually happens a lot—Rojack will talk about some supernatural occurrence that seems fake, but it always turns out be true. The world of An American Dream is not a rational place.
Quote #6
When she had been pregnant, grace had come to her again. "I don't think God is so annoyed at me any more," she said. (2.9)
Deborah's brand of superstition is rooted in Catholicism. This influences Rojack a great deal, as he later becomes obsessed with the idea of the battle between God and Devil. Regardless, if Deborah interpreted her pregnancy as an example of God's grace, then we can't imagine how she interpreted the subsequent miscarriage.
Quote #7
"She felt that as your soul died, cancer began. She would always say it was a death which was not like other deaths." (3.177)
Throughout the book, cancer is portrayed as a spiritual disease as much as a physical one. To us, it seems like Mailer is making a broader point about society, about the many deep-seated problems that we try to ignore, but eat away at us with time. What do you think?
Quote #8
"And tonight we got him. Know why? Cause he's superstitious. His nephew told him to take a walk, get lost in the crowd. No. He's not leaving the car." (3.308)
Even Eddie Ganucci, mobster extraordinaire, is super-superstitious. This is actually one of the few instances in the novel where superstitious beliefs seem to be proven wrong. That being said, we know from the end of the novel that Ganucci is free from prison just a day later, so maybe he isn't so wrong after all…
Quote #9
My brain had developed into a small manufactory of psychic particles, pellets, rockets the length of a pin, planets the size of your eye's pupil where the iris comes down. (4.8)
It almost seems like Rojack steals Deborah's psychic abilities after he kills her, and similarly, he later gains Cherry's ability to read other peoples' luck after she dies. We're not quite sure what to make of this, but we can tell you for sure that Rojack is the last person in the world we'd want to have telepathic powers. Yikes.
Quote #10
"I always believed he was a hussar of the ghosts, but Bess was the queen of the spooks. Never met anyone so telepathic." (8.70)
In the end, it turns out that Deborah comes from a long line of psychics—in fact, her father only becomes wealthy by exploiting that ability for monetary gain. Though we never get any concrete answers about the nature of all of this darn magic, the idea that the world's wealthiest people are using telepathy to reach their status is an interesting one indeed. It leaves us wondering how to pull ourselves up by our telepathic bootstraps…